Used Photoshop Elements to adjust levels, hue, and saturation. Accidentally took this photo at high ISO setting, but it lends a grainy anonimity to the graves (had to despeckle). I liked the long shadows, the side-lighting, and the colorful flowers at the near gravesites.
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This is a very nice idea and the lighting and colors are very nice. But there is nothing that is really grabbing my attention in this shot, the half stones in the front are more distracting than a lead in. Perhaps if you had at least one of them in the shot completely? A 5
Very grainy. You chose a good vantage point where the line of tombstones from left to right created a good effect of a diagonal path across your image which also intersected a horizontal path up through your image (the line of tombstones that begins on the left edge with the letters "ICK" and ends by the large tree). The colors are thrown off by noise throughout the image. What ISO was this shot on?
I see you've shot between stones, though I'd rather you had one or the other totally in the frame. Still, your colors and mood you've built here are very effective in eliciting a sacred feeling. Very nice.
Here I would have taken a different shooting position. I would have gone more to the right and shot more to the left, in this way the houses in the background on the right wouldn't have been included in the frame and also the grave stone you cut in half on the left would have been included. I would have rather seen one of the two front grave stones in the foreground in full, instead of two halves as you have here.
its interesting to me.. how sacred death is. buried dead bodies. It is somewhat of an abstract tradition. Thinking about it really makes you wonder about its origins. Was it at first simply a practical procedure to hide the bodies? - surely dead bodies above ground smelled horribly and attracted scavengers of many sorts... Somewhere along the line it seemingly became something of a ceremony.. religious even. The brain has some twisted learned behaviors. Me, i'm a cremation kinda guy. ;) its simple and it gets things done. tombstones seem more of an attempt towards some form of immortality that humans seem to hunger for than anything else. To be remembered is to live beyond life.
i think this would have been better as a landscape shot instead of portrait -- there's a lot of "dead space" (seriously, no pun intended...sorry) in the lower 1/4 of the picture.
The biggest issue I see here is focus. Other than the "ICK" on the headstone in the left side, everything else is blurry, out of focus. I do not know if a tripod was used here, but it needs to be. Remember, out of focus is not soft focus.
While I think you fulfilled the challenge there does not seem to be a point of focus in your picture. Maybe a different angle or zooming in on one section might have looked better.
The lines of shadows add a nice diagonal to the picture. I wish there were a central subject - both of the forground stones are chopped in half - perhaps if the flowers covered the forground and we could see the cemetary beyond?
There seems to be a bit of noise/pixelation in the image. Nice image, just not very captivating. Would have liked to have seen a different angle or point of view or non traditional lighting, maybe.
The flowers alongside the graves punctuate the picture beautifully. I think it would be stronger if it ended at the top of the grass - the building and sky pull the eye away from the main subject.
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